Who is the new Reagan biopic actually for?

Perhaps two of the most challenging kinds of roles that exist for an actor are 1) playing a real person, or 2) playing an actor on screen. But what happens when you're playing both?

Director Sean McNamara's latest film, Reagan, sees actor Dennis Quaid doing just that, as he takes on the role of the titular former actor and U.S. president, Ronald Reagan.

For today's Friday Group chat on Commotion, film critics Rachel Ho, Rad Simonpillai and Adam Nayman join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss how the film holds up to previous attempts to portray the Reagans on screen, and whether the biopic can be described as "nonpartisan."

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Let me just set up Reagan a bit. You have Dennis Quaid playing Reagan, who's of course an actor who becomes a president of the United States. Adam, you wrote a piece for The Ringer this week about how Reagan remains this large, commanding figure in the American imagination, yet Hollywood has really struggled to tell his story in TV and film. What makes Reagan such a tricky character to capture on film?

Adam: Well, because he's a creature of film, right? This is someone who came out of a really glorious time for Hollywood, when Hollywood was shaping, I think, real fantasies about American life. And then he helped actually shape the fantasy of American life as a politician. He drew on all that iconography. I mean, he was trying to make America great again before that was a hat. And I think that he was really good at it. He's very charismatic. He's very good at playing himself. He's an actor, so how do you get an actor to play him?

The last time that they tried to make a movie about him, really, was The Reagans, which came out in such a polarizing moment, when the right was really mad about liberal Hollywood skewering George W. Bush, and there were just a lot of complaints…. Reagan's very Teflon, right? And so, of course, when someone tackles him again 20 years later, it's like a Marvel movie for people who think books should be banned in schools, you know? It's the most kind of superhero-origin-myth treatment of him, which is what the people who are going to go see a movie like Reagan want to see. And then for the rest of us, it's just like Stalinist kitsch, but it's American.

Elamin: It's funny to me that people always mention Ronald Reagan and say he was the first American president to be an actor — they can't name a movie he's ever been in. Rachel, the framing for this film is kind of strange. It's narrated by a fictionalized former KGB officer, played by Jon Voight here. What story is this film actually trying to tell about Reagan?

Rachel: It's a good question…. It's one of those things where, I understand Reagan's connection with the Cold War, with the Berlin Wall, so I get trying to bring in the KGB agent. I feel like Jon Voight was kind of there just to fill in the gaps when they weren't able to find a good, seamless transition between different parts of his life and they just thought, "We'll throw Jon Voight in there to do his thing."

But for me, it was just like watching a Wikipedia page get acted out. I don't know Reagan the man any better than I did before watching this movie. I know more of the key points of the events that he was known for, but I don't know if I came out of the movie with any more knowledge about Reagan, the actual man, who he was,

Elamin: Or what makes him tick.

Rachel: Exactly.

Elamin: Rad, we should say Reagan, the movie, was directed by Sean McNamara. He's a filmmaker who's worked a lot in the Christian market. He claims to be a registered Democrat. He says he wanted to make a nonpartisan movie. Was this movie successful at being that?

Rad: I mean, sure?

Elamin: Wow, a ringing endorsement.

Rad: I think this movie was successful in general because I had a blast, okay? I just want to put it out here: I do love a movie that is so blatant with its intentions and with its manipulations that it becomes fascinating…. Like, all of this is insane stuff. But in terms of like Sean McNamara being a Democrat, I'll take his word for it because I don't know that a lot of the issues that this movie deals with are necessarily bipartisan issues. I mean, the movie hates commies, it hates Soviets — so does Biden. You know what I mean?

Elamin: You don't get anything more.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.